Firstly, let me point out SPECIFICALLY, that I play a Paladin, arguably the easiest class to solo with in the world. That's important simply because ANY effect of levelling is going to be WORSE on pretty much every other character.
My problems are sort of 2-3 fold with this move, if we look at wrath's npc philosophy, you can pretty much easily admit you were in this sort of "GODMODE" for most of your quest experience, the only way you could die was if you pulled around 5-10 mobs (depending on class) or an elite mob. This leads to a whole variety of things that are incredibly arguable like "LESS SKILL NEEDED TO LEVEL" and all this junk, but one thing everyone can agree on is that it made levelling less frustrating. You didn't have to worry about pulling a few too many and could blast through quests like there was no tomorrow. Elites were still, well, elites and were tough to take down without a friend to help you.
Now.. if we take a look at this through say a time monocle, or some sort of ocular device, we can see that overall wrath has been the easiest, casual friendly expansion. It was "easier" to level as a whole in wrath, 5-mans were very much easier and with the introduction of normal mode raids, raiding was much easier to get into. This point can be argued with good and bad reasoning, suffice to say though: people get used to a status quo. When everything goes 1 way, in this case towards the easy end of a spectra, people get used to an idea, in this case that soloing is meant to be an easy experience and everything else is meant to be an easier way to get into end-game activities.
The problem here is that to suddenly go away from this analogy is going to be somewhat daunting for any player, I won't go into too much detail about specific numbers, but if the situation is something like you have to "Rest" after 2-3 mobs, it's just detrimental.
One great thing about wrath's levelling mantra was that it really hid the disparity between levelling as different classes/specs. Because the levelling experience was so easy it didn't matter if you levelled say a rogue or a Ret Paladin, because even though a Ret Paladin can solo SOOO much better than the rogue, the only quests where this is actually noteworthy are elite quests, and they are meant to be group anyway.
By wanting to increase the difficulty of levelling, which lets be honest here I think is a pretty sound idea generally, you are infact making the differences between classes far more apparent. Instead of advocating your choice mechanic, everybody will be forced into the most efficient levelling spec, nobody will want to say solo as a fire mage if a frost mage can kill 1 more mob before they have to drink or something. These little differences are magnetized on a small scale.
Take for example a demo warlock and Affliction warlock in wrath. When I levelled my warlock, affliction warlock was much more fun to level, and arguably better for dealing with generic multi-pulling because of the self healing and such. However, when I ever came to an elite quest I would immediately be switching spec to Demonology, because with tools like Improved Health Funnel and such I could actually solo elites.
People will almost always value LESS DOWNTIME=FUN, so even if they enjoy say spec a over spec b, if spec b means they level with less downtime 90% of people will spec b. It isn't a question of people who want to level quickly or slowly. That difference isn't what determines spec. If somebody is new to the game they will probably pick a spec based on the descriptions and their flavour, but if they end up dying alot, they are going to severely question their choice. Some people want to level slower, and say experience the lore and read the quest text and stuff. This does not mean people want to be pigeon-holed into a spec they actually don't enjoy. Why is this? because drinking and bandaging and just downtime in general disrupts questflows dramatically.
Let's take most quests for example, most quests involve you killing 15 mobs or so, thats a pretty generic kill-quest count. The goal here is to find out what is a necessary sweet-spot for downtime, and lets define downtime as around 15-20 seconds.
If you have to stop for downtime every 2-3 mobs you end up having to stop around 5-7 times and waste around 2 minutes DOING NOTHING. If say you have to stop around every 10 mobs, that means you have to stop once. Which, is probably reasonable.
My question is here is what is the role of the player in wow, they have always in the past be deemed as a hero, somebody who has much less health than any boss but has the tenacity and willpower to be considered a hero. That makes them much stronger than other npcs right. However, if the idea is to bring the player back down to the npc level, I cannot agree with this thought process.
My biggest problem, as highlighted above, is the fact that any difficulty whilst levelling is ONLY HIGHLIGHTED by disparities between classes, classes/specs that have more downtime will just not be played whilst levelling and there is a challenge. I could understand if it was possible to be able to balance all classes/specs to around the same level, but I honestly believe this to be impossible on a 1v1 basis. Blizzard has already stated they could not possibly balance 1v1, you balance people on a 3v3 basis, having synergies etc. The fact is that with classes having such a big disparity and non-homogenization it is impossible for this to be even.
I am sitting here being kinda annoyed as a Ret paladin, I can't imagine somebody like a fire mage or a Combat Rogue having the same time as me with the current state of beta, it will just mean that less people play these specs whilst levelling, or in worst cases classes. The advantages of levelling a Hybrid, specifically one that can heal and therefore minimise downtime, will be far too great.
The last point about this change is I think this will get people into very bad habits. I'm quite sure Blizzard has stated it's abject wish that their be little distinction between a good levelling and raiding/pvp spec. That mostly these be the same apart from a few utility choices across the trees. So, we already know that there SHOULDN'T be a difference between a levelling combat rogue and a raiding combat rogue.
So what does this mean, people start using abilities that increase their survival, rogues pop evasion/dismantle on cooldown. Paladins start using the healing seal (can't remember name :<) instead of their dps seal, because it minimises downtime. People start doing silly stuff like this, whilst some of it could be applauded, say healing yourself when taking damage (I ONLY SAY THIS because Blizzard has stated they want dps to do this whilst raiding, I WHOLLY disagree with this and believe people will flood to a class that doesn't require much active self maintenence, perhaps shadow priests or mages and such, but that's a different story). However, I don't like the mantra that Soloing=5-mans=Raiding in terms of playstyle. I like the fact that they are all very different playstyles. Soloing=Whack-a-mole, dps, 5-mans=Large C-C and concentrated damage and Raiding=Maximum Damage output.
I also feel that any change in say creature damage should be very much skill-capped. What I mean by this is that a skilled player should still be in godmode, not because of class and such but because they avoided special abilities of the creatures. I could really get behind this change if AVOIDABLE damage was increased to deadly levels, IE people who didn't move out of a character whirlwinding or an aoe spell they cast 0r didn't interrupt a spell they could etc. If this was changed I think the overall levelling experience would be perfect, npc specials could kill you if you didn't avoid them properly, overwise you are perfectly fine.
This gets people into GOOD habits of moving out of fires whilst levelling or you get frustrated and die.. that's an amazing habit to get onto players. If people aren't punished specifically for that, and really just for engaging a mob, that doesn't teach a player anything other than SPEC A IS BETTER FOR SOLOING THAN SPEC B, or I SHOULD USE ABILITY A OVER ABILITY B BECAUSE I HAVE LESS DOWNTIME BUT ISNT PART OF MY NORMAL ROTATION.
I agree with the mob health increase, mainly because I feel like mobs should take around 15 seconds to kill, which they currently do on beta, but I don't feel that both are necessary, the mob health increase is a far better change than the dps increase.
I think it would be nicer to hear say why you want to change, because simply: WE WANT LEVELLING TO BE HARDER, doesn't cut it with me. Why should a "limited" part of the game need to be harder, maybe it is too easy now, but that just means I can embrace the story more, I feel powerful and an influential figure in the lore of a zone as I quest, I really get to enjoy the actual mantra of questing. However if I have to like cc and pull individually and be pedantic on every quest, then I'm going to forget the meaning of most quests, and I think this is a big detriment to some of the awesome quests that have been designed in the expansion.
My conclusion: Do 1 of 2 things, 1) Increase Special, AVOIDABLE!!!, damage. or 2) Increase all damage a smidgin (I believe in deepholm the damage was pretty comparable to damage output, although this was without masteries and with incomplete talent trees, so doubling their damage would probably end up about right.)
Otherwise you will get a very big shift in levelling power base as Hybrid Healers->Dps with Self Healing/Kiting ability -> Ranged Dps -> Melee dps. Maybe it is a good thing, but I think it just becomes unfair and kills any choice I had whilst levelling, and forces me into the best soloing spec. I loved how I could level as holy in wrath because I could kill things quickly and rarely had to use my healing abilities. However in Cataclysm I would just have more downtime and would just rather heal as something that minimised that.
